Salad Days in Naples

In my continuing hunt for Corelli's vanishing caprino, I watched a DVD of a 1958 "Forza" performance from Naples. Tebaldi, Corelli, Bastianini, Christoff, and the fine Mexican mezzo soprano Oralia Dominguez. I'd seen it before, but on a much smaller screen. In the first scene or two, I thought I noticed some objects falling diagonally to the stage floor, but I figured it might just be distortion. This is a kinoscope of an ancient black and white Italian TV transmission, and although it's clear enough given all that, you couldn't call it pristine. Then later, when Corelli's finished his big aria in Act II, I noticed them again. And after he and Bastianini finish their first duet, here come several more. I finally recognized what I was looking at: vegetables. People in the audience, high up in the theater, are throwing vegetables at the stage. The singers just ignore them. The vegetables don't actually hit anybody, but I can't tell if that's a courtesy or just bad aim.

This is a great cast and they're singing brilliantly. But in 1958, in Naples at least, opera fans took rivalries between singers seriously. Stories of fist fights breaking out in Italian opera houses continue to circulate; Corelli was famous for rushing into a box and drawing his stage sword on a guy who'd booed him, and these flying verdure put that in perspective. A lot of live recordings feature drawn out battles between fans screaming "bravo" and others not only booing, but shouting invective. Sometimes the whole audience gets in an uproar while the singers stand around and wait.

I have never seen anyone throw anything at the stage--except flowers--in my 40 years of opera-going. I remember old actors in my youth saying things like "that looks like a good throwing tomato", but I never actually saw any in use. These looked more like bunches of carrots, anyway. Which reminds me of a funny story. Singers are quite accustomed to flowers being thrown at them, and many become adept at catching them in mid-air. Maria Callas was quite near-sighted, but at a curtain call at La Scala she demonstrated her fielding technique with a clean, easy catch, pretty impressive for a half-blind woman staring across a bank of footlights. Unhappily, what she'd caught so gracefully turned out to be a bunch of turnips.

Franco Corelli Begins

Corelli was largely self-taught. There are conflicting accounts of formal training, but it was brief and unsuccessful. His friend Carlo Scaravelli was studying with a voice teacher, Arturo Melocchi, whose unconventional method was based on lowering the larynx. After each lesson he'd demonstrate for Corelli what he'd just been taught. (Melocchi was also the teacher of Mario del Monaco and Luigi Ottolini). It is a dangerous way to sing, in part because it requires great athleticism and stamina, "and vocal cords of steel". Many voices have been ruined in this way. Corelli had been an athlete, and his powerful physique was the very instrument this challenging technique might reward. (As Corelli neared 50, I believe he was simply no longer strong enough to sing like this.) Apart from these second-hand lessons, Corelli taught himself, but he never abandoned Melocchi's raised larynx. At first Corelli didn't have a very strong upper voice, but he worked obsessively with a tape recorder, and his upper register improved. He won an important competition, and soon after made his debut, in 1951, as Don Jose.

Radames was his originally scheduled debut, but he was unable to sustain the high tessitura of that role—one of the most difficult Verdi tenor parts—and he made his debut instead as Don Jose in Bizet's "Carmen", which he later called his favorite role. Besides the RCA 1963 commercial recording, with Price, Freni and Merrill under Von Karajan, there are at least 4 complete live recordings of Corelli in his youthful prime in this role, more or less readily available. (He recorded the role again in the early 70's, with Anna Moffo as Carmen, for Eurodisc. I think this may have been Franco's last commercial recording.)

By 1956, Corelli had tamed his recalcitrant upper range enough to record Radames commercially for Cetra, with Mary Curtis-Verna, Miriam Pirazzini, Gian-Giacomo Guelphi and Giulio Neri. This is a strong, visceral performance, and a good example of Corelli's singing in the studio in the middle-fifties. (By happy coincidence, Curtis-Verna's last performances before her retirement were as Desdemona in Verdi's "Otello", at Baltimore Opera. She was happy to leave the stage under the wing of Rosa Ponselle, and I was fortunate to hear what an aging diva could accomplish in a nurturing environment. The Met comprimario Robert Nagy was Otello, and I can report that he sang the hell out of it. I saw all three peformances, and I learned a lot. Richard Fredericks was Iago.) A radio broadcast of one of his Naples "Aida" performances exists, and, like the Cetra set, it shows a quite pronounced caprino. Caprino is an Italian cheese made from goat's milk. Applied to a singer—especially to a tenor-- it means that he displays a quick vibrato reminiscent of a bleating goat. This problem is caused by imperfect breath control and support. Corelli's sound is already big, beautiful and exciting, but he has not yet perfected his technique:"contents under pressure".

Franco Corelli at the Met

In 1968, Corelli was at the pinnacle of his fame and in the full flood tide of his vocal glory. Tall, handsome and so athletic, the Italians called him "Golden Thighs", and pictures of him as "Werther" (Massenet), "Andrea Chenier" (Giordano), or "Poliuto"(Donizetti) make it easy to see why. He was a real stage animal. There was a palpable thrill about him, an incandescent vibration. He had a thoroughly masculine stage presence, a sense of a very strong, young man (although in 1968 he was already 45), but he created also the impression of great sensitivity and sadness. He was, in fact, the living image of the Romantic Hero, right out of Byron. He wasn't an actor in the sense that Norman Treigle or Jon Vickers or Teresa Stratas were actors. The role became Corelli, not the other way around. There was something beyond acting about his electric stage presence. When Franco Corelli made an entrance, you knew that something important was about to happen. He would have had a career even if he'd had a mediocre voice, just on looks and presence alone. But he also happened to have a very large, dark, gorgeous voice and stunning high notes. (He produces what may be the single most exciting tenor High C on records at the end of Act III of Gounod's "Romeo et Juliette", recorded by EMI in June and July 1968, and co-starring Mirella Freni.) Many commentators believe his was the greatest tenor voice of his time--certainly that's my belief--and some consider it the greatest tenor voice since Caruso.

It has to be admitted that there is another school of thought. In his live Met performances, Corelli often seems unmusical: note values are ignored, and his rhythm is often slack. Once he settles into a high pianissimo, he might be there a long time, and when he throws a forte high note into the auditorium, it can seem as if there's no conductor present at all. There are exceptions, such as his Calaf opposite Nilsson's Turandot, under Stokowski, in his first Met season. After he conquered the Met, he largely abandoned performing in Europe. Rudolf Bing needed Corelli, protected Corelli, and in a way, I think, damaged Corelli. Bing's Met was not a conductor's house. Corelli, Bing's biggest star, worked with few strong conductors, and he learned to get his way with weak ones, to his detriment. In a way, Corelli's triumph at the Met halted his growth as a serious artist. He became The Greatest Tenor in the World, something more than a working musician, but perhaps something less. In his later seasons at the Met his musical habits became sloppy and inelegant, but I can tell you from my own experience, they often produced a very exciting performance. There was a real sense of danger, of risk-taking, every minute he was onstage. This was often opera not as high art, but as blood sport.

The Great Franco Corelli

The Great Franco Corelli

For me, Franco Corelli personifies Italian opera. The first time I went to the Met, in 1968, I heard Franco Corelli as Cavaradossi in "Tosca" opposite Birgit Nilsson. That's a cast that can't be bettered, especially with the fine singing actor Gabriel Bacquier as Scarpia, although a case could be made that only Corelli was appropriately cast. Certainly it was opera in the international style, with Italians beginning to thin out in the opera world, replaced by everyone else, especially former Soviets and Americans. Corelli is my favorite tenor. No apologies or excuses. Not the patrician Kraus, or the cool and elegant Bjoerling, the immaculate Bergonzi or the thrilling Vickers. Domingo will always be Corelli's understudy (unfair as that is to the endless achievements of one of history's greatest tenors), because the '69 Met strike robbed me of what would have been Corelli's last Manrico and gave me Domingo's in his place. Domingo is a sovereign artist, but he was never happy in "Di quella pira". Ask Schuyler Chapin. Pavarotti was a spectacularly gifted, heart-warming singer, but I'll let him speak for himself about Franco: "He was the greatest dramatic tenor who ever lived." But every great career moves in an arc, as the stupendous Italian baritone Titta Ruffo, rival of Caruso and Chaliapin in the early decades of the 20th century, expresses so poignantly in his autobiography, "My Parabola".

Corelli made his belated debut in 1951, the year before I was born, and arrived at the Met in 1961, with Leontyne Price in "Trovatore". Until his retirement in 1975, he was the Greatest Tenor in the World, apologies to Richard Tucker's many fans. He left too few commercial recordings, but still a dozen or so complete sets and a number of recitals, and a lot of live recordings, many of them thrilling. I heard him at his peak, in 1968, and 7 times more before he retired. In the next few posts, I'd like to examine his recorded legacy, and my experience of him in the theater.